Thunderstorms may occur randomly, as rain or snow storms worsen. The average storm lasts 0.5 – 1 Minecraft day, and there is a 0.5 to 7.5 day delay between thunderstorms. They can be skipped entirely with the use of a bed.

As with rain and snow, the sky is darkened and the sun, moon, and stars are no longer visible. Thunderstorms darken the world, causing light from the sky to decrease to a level of 10 in full daylight (however, brightness is closer to a level 11.5 and is tinted blue). The clouds darken from white to a dark gray, although clouds themselves do not precipitate or create lightning. While the sun is not visible during rain, the glow associated with sunrise and sunset is still visible.

Unlike during regular rainstorms or snowstorms, the light level from the sky is treated as if it were 5 for the purposes of hostile mob spawning, which allows hostile mobs to spawn at any time of the day.

lightning_boltnote: this is not a savegame ID, this is an alias for the purposes of the /summon command.

Lightning is a lethal element to thunderstorms. Lightning momentarily increases the sky light's brightness to slightly greater than full daylight.

The fire that a lightning bolt creates.

Lightning strikes randomly and creates fires where it strikes. Such fires act normally, igniting all flammable materials, detonating TNT, and even activating nether portals. The lightning itself however, is not destructive and will not destroy blocks. While most fires are extinguished by the rain, areas that block rain can allow the fire to spread, and any netherrack lit by lightning will not be extinguished by the rain.

Most entities struck by lightning are dealt 5 () damage, and are set on fire, which may cause additional damage. If lightning strikes a pig, it turns into a zombie pigman. If lightning strikes a creeper, it becomes charged. If lightning strikes a villager, it transforms into a witch.

If the player is killed by a lightning strike, the death message will read "[player] was struck by lightning." However, this message will not display if the player was killed by the fire created by a lightning bolt.

Lightning may be manually summoned with the /summon lightning_bolt command. While it is summoned as an entity, it cannot be referred to by commands or selectors. This may have changed as of 1.12.2.

Thunder is a sound event that occurs every time lightning strikes. It can be heard by the player up to 160,000 blocks away from the position of the lightning strike. Thunder is heard instantly, regardless of the player's distance from the lightning strike itself.

For each loaded chunk, every tick there is a 1⁄100,000 chance of an attempted lightning strike during a thunderstorm.

When lightning is to strike, random X and Z coordinates within the chunk are chosen, and the block just above the highest block that is liquid or blocks movement is chosen for the lightning strike. Then if there are any living entities that can see the sky in a 3×3×h region from 3 below the target block up to the world height, one such entity is selected at random and the lightning target is moved to the block the entity is standing in.

The target block is checked again for the following conditions:

Target block can see sky.

Rain (not snow) is falling in the target block.

Thus, lightning does not naturally strike within cold biomes, or biomes where it does not rain (except in the Console Edition).

If these conditions pass, lightning strikes.

When lightning strikes, all entities within a 6×6×12 region horizontally centered on the northwest corner of the target block with the bottom edge 3 below the target block are struck by lightning. Multiple passes are made over this region, so items dropped during an earlier pass may be destroyed during a subsequent pass; damage immunity usually prevents struck mobs from taking more than 5 () damage. Non-solid blocks (such as redstone, torches, and snow layers) are not directly affected by lightning.

If a player throws a trident enchanted with Channeling at a mob, a lightning bolt will be summoned and will strike that mob. This is the first and only way that a player can manually summon lightning without commands.

In Bedrock Edition, If the player leaves the world during a thunderstorm and rejoins, it would only be raining.

Lightning, unlike other weather effects, does not have an image file associated with it. Thus, it is coded directly into the game engine, allowing for dynamic, realistic lightning.

In Bedrock Edition, lightning strikes closer to the player more often than in Java Edition and Legacy Console Edition, due to spawn distance limits.

If multiple lightning bolts strike a single villager at the same time, the number of witches spawned as a result is equal to the number of lightning bolts, making it possible, but ridiculously unlikely, to get multiple witches from one villager. This also works with pig-to-pigman transformations, but not creeper-to-charged transformations as the latter is just a change of state rather than a new entity creation.

The player cannot see mobs, water, glass, etc., through lightning.

In Legacy Console Edition, If the player leaves the world with Weather Cycle on during a thunderstorm, it would look like it's only raining, even if it is technically still a thunderstorm.

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